AIDS

What is AIDS?
                   
                      Acquired immune deficiency syndrome or acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (AIDS or Aids) is a collection of symptoms and infections resulting from the specific damage to the immune system caused by the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) in humans,[1] and similar viruses in other species (SIV, FIV, etc.). The late stage of the condition leaves individuals susceptible to opportunistic infections and tumors. Although treatments for AIDS and HIV exist to decelerate the virus' progression, there is currently no known cure. HIV, et al., are transmitted through direct contact of a mucous membrane or the bloodstream with a bodily fluid containing HIV, such as blood, semen, vaginal fluid, preseminal fluid, and breast milk.[2][3] This transmission can come in the form of anal, vaginal or oral sex, blood transfusion, contaminated hypodermic needles, exchange between mother and baby during pregnancy, childbirth, or breastfeeding, or other exposure to one of the above bodily fluids.

AIDS origin :

                    Most researchers believe that HIV originated in sub-Saharan Africa during the twentieth century; it is now a pandemic, with an estimated 38.6 million people now living with the disease worldwide. As of January 2006, the Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS) and the World Health Organization (WHO) estimate that AIDS has killed more than 25 million people since it was first recognized on June 5, 1981, making it one of the most destructive epidemics in recorded history. In 2005 alone, AIDS claimed an estimated 2.4–3.3 million lives, of which more than 570,000 were children. A third of these deaths are occurring in sub-Saharan Africa, retarding economic growth and destroying human capital. Antiretroviral treatment reduces both the mortality and the morbidity of HIV infection, but routine access to antiretroviral medication is not available in all countries. HIV/AIDS stigma is more severe than that associated with other life-threatening conditions and extends beyond the disease itself to providers and even volunteers involved with the care of people living with HIV.

HIV, the infectious agent of AIDS, is thought to have originated in non-human primates in sub-Saharan Africa and transferred to humans during the 20th century. The epidemic officially began on 5 June 1981.

Two species of HIV infect humans: HIV-1 and HIV-2. HIV-2 may have originated from the Sooty Mangabey (Cercocebus atys), an Old World monkey of Guinea-Bissau, Gabon, and Cameroon.[1] HIV-1 is more virulent. It is easily transmitted and is the cause of the majority of HIV infections globally. HIV-2 is less transmittable and is largely confined to West Africa. HIV-1 is the species described below.

Likely spread from animal to human populations :

                                                                                       A variety of theories exist explaining the transfer of HIV to humans, but no single hypothesis is unanimously accepted, and the topic remains controversial.

 From Cameroon chimpanzees?

                                                     The most widely accepted theory is so called 'Hunter' Theory according to which transference from ape to human most likely occurred when a human was bitten by an ape or was cut while butchering one, and the human became infected.Researchers announced in May 2006 that HIV most likely originated in wild chimpanzees in the southeastern rain forests of Cameroon (modern East Province) rather than in Kinshasa, Democratic Republic of Congo (formerly Zaire), as had previously been believed. Seven years of research and 1,300 chimpanzee genetic samples led Dr. Beatrice Hahn of the University of Alabama, Birmingham, to identify chimpanzee communities near Cameroon's Sanaga River as the most likely originators.

Calculating based on a fixed mutation rate, the jump from chimpanzee to human likely occurred during the French colonial period (1919–1960). Comparative primatologist Jim Moore suggests that this may have been the result of colonial practices of forced labour, which could have suppressed the immune system of the initial hunter enough to allow the virus to infect and take hold. Likewise, using one needle on many patients for forced immunisations for illnesses such as sleeping sickness may have sped the virus's initial spread through Cameroon. Needles were also shared in the booming colonial city of Kinshasa, where the virus spread.


Oral polio vaccine hypothesis :

                                                    
The Times published an article in 1987 stating that WHO suspected some kind of connection with its vaccine program and AIDS-epidemic. The story was almost entirely based on statements given by one unnamed WHO advisor.

Freelance journalist Tom Curtis discussed this controversial possibility for the origin of HIV/AIDS in a 1992 Rolling Stone magazine article. He put forward what is now known as the OPV AIDS hypothesis, which suggests that AIDS was inadvertently caused in the late 1950s in the Belgian Congo by Hilary Koprowski's research into a polio vaccine. Although subsequently retracted due to libel issues surrounding its claims, the Rolling Stone article motivated another freelance journalist, Edward Hooper, to probe more deeply into this subject. Hooper's research resulted in his publishing a 1999 book, The River, in which he alleged that an experimental oral polio vaccine prepared using chimpanzee kidney tissue was the route through which simian immunodeficiency virus (SIV) crossed into humans to become HIV, thus starting the human AIDS pandemic.
This theory is contradicted by an analysis of genetic mutation in primate lentivirus strains that estimates the origin of the HIV-1 strain to be around 1930, with 95% certainty of it lying between 1910 and 1950.

Edward Hooper rejects the dates calculated using a fixed mutation rate on the basis that phylogenetic dating of "the most recombinogenic organisms known to medical science", immunodeficiency viruses, is "inherently incapable of making any allowance for recombination".

In February 2000 one of the original developers of the polio vaccine, Philadelphia based Wistar Institute found a vial of the original vaccine used in the vaccination program. It was analyzed in April 2001, and no traces of either HIV-1 or SIV were found in the sample. A second analysis showed that only macaque monkey kidney cells, which cannot be infected with SIV or HIV, were used to produce the vaccine.[13] While the analysis was done on only one vial of vaccine, some scientists have concluded that the polio vaccine theory of the origins of HIV is not possible.

The hypothesis that oral polio vaccine was involved in the origin of AIDS has been investigated and widely rejected by the scientific community, as a large mass of available evidence contradicts it.